Margaret St. Clair: The Best of Margaret St. Clair

Am I going back into the deep freeze? If I am, I know I’ll never come out. Jake is breaking down, and it’s the last time.

Never mind. It’s all right. This is a happy ending, because things are safe after all. The future is secure in nonhuman hands. Thank God, I mean not hands, but paws.

The Best of MARGARET ST. CLAIR

Edited by Martin H. Greenberg

Academy Chicago Publishers

Copyright © Margaret St. Clair, 1967: “The Wine of Earth” © 1977: “Idris’ Pig”; “The Gardener”; “Child of Void”; “Hathor’s Pets”. © 1978: “The Pillows”; “The Listening Child”. © 1979: “Brightness Falls from the Air”; “The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles”. © 1980: “The Causes”; “An Egg A Month From All Over”. © 1981: “Prott”; “New Ritual”; “Wryneck Draw Me”. © 1982: “Brenda”; “Short in the Chest”. © 1984: “Horrer Howce”. Copyright © 1958 by Satellite Science Fiction: “The Invested Libido”; Copyright © 1960 by Galaxy: “The Nuse Man”. Copyright © 1961 by Galaxy: “An Old-fashioned Bird Christmas”.

Published in 1985 by Academy Chicago Publishers, 425 N. Michigan Ave.

Chicago, Illinois 60611

Copyright © 1985 by Margaret St. Clair

Printed and bound in the U.S.A.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

St. Clair, Margaret.

The best of Margaret St. Clair.

1. Science fiction, American. 2. Fantastic fiction, American. I. Greenberg, Martin Harry. II. Title.

PS3569.T118A6 1985 813’.54 85-18599

ISBN 0-89733-163-X

ISBN 0-89733-164-8 (pbk.)

$4.95

Cover design by Armen Kojoyian

In the past, I have been accused of making up some of the unusual words that appear in my stories. Sometimes this accusation has been justified; sometimes, as in “Vulcan’s Dolls” (see Plant Life of the Pacific World) it has not. For the record, therefore, be it observed that “dight” is a middle English word meaning, among other things, “to have intercourse with.” (See Poets of the English Language, Auden and Pearson, Vol. 1, p. 173.) “Dight” was reintroduced by a late twentieth-century philologist who disliked the “sleep with” euphemism, and who saw that the language desperately needed a transitive verb that would be “good usage.”